As an insurance professional, you know your most productive time is when you’re dealing with clients: building and maintaining relationships and closing new business with them. Your commission differentiates you from non-sales roles. The harder and smarter you work, the more you earn. However, there is only one you. So, one of the smartest things you can do is find a way to automate other tasks, so you can focus on writing more business.
What to Automate?
You’ll want to automate whatever tasks you can that won’t negatively affect the sales process. Listed below are some of the more common automated tasks that insurance professionals are now using.
Email follow-up:
The goal of an email follow-up is to reassure clients of what they just did (typically while on your website) and to build credibility for you and your agency. You can do this through:
- thank you emails
- lead follow-up messages
- quote complete emails
- client birthday messages
- holiday communications
If you’re not using an automated system for these types of messages, you may be setting aside a considerable amount of time to ensure these touch points continue. Implementing an automated system will save you time and keep you focused on tasks that are more important.
You can even use email to automate prospecting from leads that have gone cold. Check out our article regarding cold lead conversion.
Lead management:
It’s easy to sort, track, and follow-up with lead automation. You get automated customer segmentation – purchase history, location, volume, etc. – and help with prospecting and lead nurturing. You’ll save the time lost by manually diving in and pulling these segments. Your list will already be prepared for your next outreach to prospects and clients.
Rusty Wilson, Quotit’s Director of Sales, wrote a useful guide on getting started with insurance lead management; you can read it here.
Quoting and enrollment:
Manual quoting is tedious, time consuming, and “old school.” Having to reach out to each carrier separately can be a burden, especially if you represent a variety of insurers. Making your clients apply online for policies from different carriers could drive them away. Make life easier for yourself – and for your clients – by offering live, multi-carrier quoting directly on your website. Give your clients the ability to serve themselves and reduce your administrative burden. It’s a win-win for both of you, with 24/7 availability for quotes and proposals. If your prospects and clients like what they see on your site, they’re more likely to want to do business with you. And automating this process allows you to collect other information and automate your follow-up later.
To read about the benefits of a real-time quoting system, click here.
Performance reports:
Don’t risk becoming more of an analyst than a consultant. If you’re spending hours each week preparing performance reports from web metrics, sales close ratios, etc., you’re not focusing on what you do best – and you’re not increasing your opportunity for more commissions in the future. While metrics are important to success, the technology exists to automate these reports.
Many Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and sales tools are available today that can tie all of your systems together – to deliver comprehensive performance reports. Follow this link for tips on selecting the right CRM software for insurance professionals.
These are just a few of the more common, automatable tasks that can help you get back to what you do best: selling. You’ll likely find investing in automation is well worth the costs when you consider what’s currently working, what’s taking time away from your prospecting and sales, and the ways you can streamline your sales process.
For details on how we can help you with your email, lead management, quoting, and performance analytics, call 1-866-4-QUOTIT (1-866-478-6848) or visit our plans and pricing page information.
